7 Asset Tracking Companies for Equipment That Has No Engine
Fleet telematics is a crowded, mature market. Tracking things with no engine is not, and the difference matters because the asset tracking market is growing on the back of exactly this problem. A vehicle tracker has a permanent power supply and can report every thirty seconds for a decade. A pump, a trailer or a tool chest gives you nothing, so every fix you take spends a battery you cannot recharge without sending someone to find the thing first.
That turns the buying decision upside down. Refresh rate stops being a feature and becomes a cost. The seven companies below were checked on their own product pages on 18 September 2026, and they answer the power problem in three genuinely different ways.
The friction is that most platforms in this space were built for vehicles and had asset tracking added later, so the pricing model, the reporting defaults and the hardware all assume a battery that never runs out. That assumption is the single most common reason a rollout stalls at the trailers.
| Company | Approach | Battery (stated) | Needs a gateway | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPX | Cellular trackers plus BLE tags | Up to 10 years at one fix a day | Varies by product | None |
| Logistimatics | Cellular, buy outright | Up to 5 years at one fix a day | No | $54.99 plus $12.50 a month |
| Samsara | Unpowered asset gateway | No | None | |
| Verizon Connect | Wired EAT and battery EAT-B | Up to 13 years, stated optimal | No | None |
| Geotab | Asset trackers beside the GO device | No | None | |
| One Step GPS | Battery and solar trackers | No | $13.95 a month | |
| Azuga | Equipment beacons plus trackers | Beacons need a reader | None |
Checked on each vendor’s own pages, 18 September 2026. A blank cell means the company publishes no figure. Disclosure: GPX and Logistimatics are brands we work with, listed here on published specification alongside rivals we have linked so you can verify every claim.
Where These Rollouts Go Wrong
- The battery figure gets read without its duty cycle. Ten years and one fix a day are the same sentence. Teams budget for the first half and configure for the second.
- Nobody checks who owns the reader. A cheap tag that reports through your own cellular tracker is genuinely cheap, and genuinely blind whenever that tracker is somewhere else.
- The pilot runs on the easy assets. Vehicles get done first because they supply power. Trailers and yard equipment slip to phase two, which is where the losses actually are.
- Per-vehicle pricing gets applied to things that are not vehicles. Paying a vehicle rate for a pallet cage is how a sensible budget turns into a rejected business case.
1. GPX
Built around the unpowered half of the problem rather than retrofitted to it. The range splits cleanly: cellular devices that fix their own position, and Bluetooth tags that ride on something else. The AssetTrack states up to ten years of battery at one report per day and carries a Bluetooth radio that reads nearby tags, so a single cellular unit becomes the reader for a cluster of cheap ones.
The tag range is where the cost per asset falls. AssetTag Edge is 6mm thick, 8.5 grams and rated up to four years, intended for bulk-tagging hand tools and dunnage around a tracker you already own.
Strengths: the longest published battery figure here, genuine tag-plus-tracker architecture, IP67 across the range.
Limitations: no published price anywhere, and the cellular coverage on its own pages is stated as the United States, Canada and Mexico.
2. Logistimatics
The opposite commercial posture: everything is on the product page. The AssetTrack Mini is $54.99 with up to five years at one report a day, IP67, rated to minus 30 Celsius, with a field-replaceable battery and published volume pricing down to $44.99 a unit at twenty.
The subscription is $12.50 a month billed annually or $19.99 monthly, with no contract. Reporting runs from daily down to five-minute intervals for a recovery.
Strengths: full published pricing, buy online, no procurement cycle, field-replaceable cell.
Limitations: no Bluetooth tag layer, so every tracked item needs its own device and its own plan. Consumer and SMB scale rather than enterprise.
3. Samsara
Samsara sells a dedicated unpowered asset gateway alongside its vehicle hardware, plus environmental monitors and an asset tag product, all inside one operations platform. For a mixed estate where vehicles are the majority and assets the tail, keeping both in one console has real value.
No price appears on its telematics page. Third-party reports put vehicle rates near $27 to $33 per vehicle per month on a three-year term, and asset hardware is an add-on to that.
Strengths: one platform for powered and unpowered, strong reporting and integrations.
Limitations: no published pricing, and the commercial model is built around per-vehicle counts on the longest standard contract in the category.
4. Verizon Connect
The most explicitly asset-focused enterprise page we read. Verizon Connect names two devices, a wired EAT for powered assets and a battery EAT-B for non-powered, and enumerates the equipment it expects to see: backhoes, excavators, forklifts, telehandlers, trailers, reefers, containers, dumpsters, generators and tanks.
The EAT-B is quoted at up to thirteen years of location updates, footnoted as assuming optimal conditions. It is also the only vendor here that states plainly that professional installation costs extra, without naming a figure.
Strengths: unambiguous unpowered coverage, the longest quoted battery figure in the group, honest about install cost.
Limitations: no published price, and the battery number carries an optimal-conditions caveat that does a lot of work.
5. Geotab
Geotab approaches assets through the same platform that runs its GO vehicle device, with integrated asset tracking hardware and software and a large marketplace of third-party add-ons. For organisations already standardised on Geotab for vehicles, extending to assets is the path of least resistance.
The solutions page stays generic about unpowered hardware and publishes no price. Its demo form is two pages and asks for job title and phone number before it says anything about cost.
Strengths: deep platform, large integration ecosystem, established installer network.
Limitations: asset hardware is less prominent than the vehicle line, and nothing about price is visible without a sales conversation.
6. One Step GPS
The only company in this group that publishes a rate on its homepage: $13.95 a month, no contracts, no cancellation fees, device supplied free and returned when you stop. One Step GPS lists battery and solar trackers explicitly for trailers and construction equipment.
Battery figures are not published per device on the homepage, and the free hardware is a loan rather than a purchase.
Strengths: published price, no term, solar option for long outdoor deployments.
Limitations: no stated battery life to compare against, and cancelling means returning the hardware.
7. Azuga
Azuga splits the problem into asset tracking for trailers and high-value equipment, and a separate equipment beacon product for small tools. The beacon approach is the cheapest per item in principle, because a beacon costs a fraction of a cellular device.
The catch is the same as every beacon system: it reports through a reader, so coverage is wherever your readers are. No prices are published, and the demo button points at a URL labelled pricing.
Strengths: a genuine answer for small tools, not just large plant.
Limitations: beacons need readers in range, and nothing is priced publicly.
Sort Your Assets Into Three Piles First
Put anything with a permanent power supply in one pile, anything valuable that travels alone in a second, and the long tail of small items that always move with something bigger in a third. The first pile is ordinary fleet telematics. The second needs a cellular device with a multi-year battery. The third only ever makes financial sense as tags reading through the second.
Shortlist against those three piles rather than against feature lists, and most of this market sorts itself in an afternoon. Our guide to stopping equipment losses with asset tracking covers the operational side, and the GPS, BLE and RFID comparison explains why the third pile behaves so differently from the first two.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What makes unpowered asset tracking different from fleet tracking?+
Power. A vehicle tracker draws from the battery it is wired to, so it can report every thirty seconds forever. A trailer, generator or tool chest supplies nothing, so every position fix spends a finite budget. That single constraint drives the whole product design: bigger cells, slower reporting, and a decision about whether the device fixes its own position or borrows one from a reader nearby.
How long does an asset tracker battery really last?+
As long as its duty cycle allows. The long figures in this market, five years and ten years, are quoted at one position fix every twenty-four hours. Turn the same device up to a fix every five minutes for a theft recovery and you are measuring in days. Always read the reporting interval printed beside the battery claim, because the claim is meaningless without it.
Do I need to install gateways around my site?+
It depends on the tag. Some Bluetooth tags report only when one of your own cellular trackers passes within range, which means no new infrastructure but also no visibility when nothing passes. Others broadcast to a terrestrial network of phones and connected devices, so they report wherever that network reaches. Cellular trackers need nothing at all: they talk straight to a mobile network.
Why do most of these companies not publish pricing?+
Because they sell per deployment rather than per unit, and the rate moves with volume, hardware mix and contract length. We checked every product page on this list. Two of the seven publish a full price, one publishes a monthly rate, and the rest quote nothing. That is a commercial decision, not evidence about value, but it does mean budgeting takes a phone call.
Can I mix cheap tags and expensive trackers in one system?+
That is the design most of these vendors are pushing toward. Put a cellular tracker on the container, the trailer or the truck, then tag the twenty things that travel with it. The cellular device acts as the reader, so you pay for one data plan rather than twenty. It only works if the cheap items genuinely stay near the expensive one.
What happens to a tracked asset that goes into a steel container?+
Satellite signal stops. A GNSS receiver cannot see the sky through a steel roof, so the device falls back to whatever else it has: cellular tower positioning, WiFi positioning, or simply reporting its last known fix. This is why container and trailer deployments usually place the tracker on the outside skin or the roof rather than inside with the cargo.
Is asset tracking worth it for low-value equipment?+
Per item, often not. In bulk, frequently yes, because the cost falls fast: published volume pricing runs to about $44.99 a unit at twenty, and slim Bluetooth tags cost a fraction of a cellular device. The honest test is whether you currently lose or hunt for enough items each year to cover the annual subscription, not whether any single item is valuable.
